The story of the Cunning Little Vixen originally appeared in the Czech newspaper Lidove Noviny (Popular Daily), as prose written by staffer Rudolf Tesnohlidek to accompany drawings by Stanislav Lolek. Leos Janácek was a regular reader of Lidove Noviny, and when the story came out in serialized form in 1920, he recognized its potential for operatic treatment. Janácek's housekeeper wrote in her memoirs that she had introduced Janácek to the serial, but the truth of this claim has been disputed.

The idea of composing a work on a story based in the natural world happily coincided with Janácek's 1921 purchase of a house in the country (a luxury which, until then, he had been unable to afford), and once he had adapted the libretto, work went swiftly. By January 1924, the opera was complete, and it premiered in Brno on November 6 of that year. Janácek modified Tesnohlidek's story considerably, condensing it, shifting its chronology, and changing the ending. The libretto contains some chronological impossibilities and confusing references as a result of Janácek's manipulations; characteristically, Janácek cared more for the spirit of the story than the letter of logic.

The work is difficult to stage convincingly, since there are adult singing roles for the fox, for another fox who becomes her husband, and for a badger, a dog, some chickens, and other animals, all on the same stage, with a a variety of human characters who observe and even capture Sharp-Ears. In the immensely touching final scene, Sharp-Ears has died, and her latest cubs carry on with the same sort of endearing comic antics as her mother did. Janácek had a unique penchant for offbeat operatic subjects. In this case he was surely led to this story by an ardent love of nature that pours from every measure of this magical score. It may play clumsily on stage, but when you hear a recording you can stage it in your imagination. The Cunning Little Vixen is perhaps this composer's most lovable work.

Janácek's score makes extensive use of motivic variation, as he maneuvers his speech melodies into different, related forms to suggest parallels between parts of the story. For example, the mournful melody played when the Vixen is captured in the first act recurs to color the penultimate scene's human longings. But the score of The Cunning Little Vixen is distinguished primarily by its brilliance and sunniness. Textures are light and bright; sometimes, as in the Ballet of the Blue Dragonfly, they seem almost transparent. Humor is embraced along with pathos, and the deceptions of the Vixen are treated with the same sense of affectionate play as her forays into love and sensuality. Even the death of the Vixen seems graceful: it is rendered simply with a cymbal-gunshot and a brief silence, The final scene, in which the Forester meditates on the cycle of life, is fearlessly optimistic. The Cunning Little Vixen is one of Janácek's freshest and most vital works.

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